George Harrison taught me how to play the ukulele.

It's actually true. My father, the man who introduced me to The Beatles with his incredible record collection, bought me a ukulele for Christmas this year. I'm loving every second of playing it.

I attempted to be very heady about learning to play. I'm a classically trained piano player since the age of five, and my analytical side of the brain wanted to learn the same way I did as a kid. Learn the notes, learn the chords, understand where everything is before moving on to playing a song. I have to say though, this hasn't been helpful. It seems almost impossible to do such a thing with such a fun little instrument. It would be like handing an eager young student a dictionary and forcing them to memorize each word, each definition. The way you get people to learn the meaning of words is by giving them an extraordinary book to read. Fall in love with the story, then you fall in love with the words. The life of the sentences inspires one to understand the meaning of the words that created it. The love for a song's melody and tone inspires one to understand how each note creates it.

This is why I'm saying that George Harrison has taught me how to play the ukulele. Songs like "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something" had me go from not being able to strum a proper sounding note, to memorizing and fully playing both songs; singing included. All of this accomplished in only a few short hours. And who better than to teach me than someone who loved the ukulele himself. "It's one instrument you can't play and not laugh!" He wrote this about the beloved instrument in February of 1999.

I was doing some searching around for great versions of "Here Comes the Sun" to watch how people strum and happened upon this amazing video of George performing in 1972.



I can't help but swoon when I watch this.

Oh! And here's a fun clip of George, Paul, and Ringo sitting in Central Park from The Beatles Anthology DVD.



In other Beatles news, Ringo Starr is getting his star tomorrow from the Walk of Fame on Ivar. Wish I could be there to witness it. My friend Evren got to see George Harrison's star ceremony from inside Capitol, right where his star was laid. Exciting! Gives me the wiggles.